International internal communication in the workplace: a transdisciplinary approach

(1)

1

I NTERNATIONAL INTERNAL COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE :

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Annelise LY

Dissertation for the degree of philosophiae doctor (PhD) At the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)

May 2016

(2)

2

8. APPENDICES ... I 8.1. SOURCES OF DATA... II 8.2. TRANSCRIPTION AND CODING OF THE INTERVIEWS (EXAMPLE) ... III 8.3. ROLE ENACTMENT: SCENARIOS AND PARTICIPANT´S INFORMATION...VII 8.4. ROLE ENACTMENT: ANALYSIS (EXAMPLE) ... IX 8.5. PERCEPTION QUESTIONNAIRE: QUESTIONNAIRE AND PARTICIPANT´S INFORMATION ... X 8.6. PERCEPTION QUESTIONNAIRE: ANALYSIS... XV

(4)

4

List of tables

Table 1: Attributes of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production ... 21 Table 2: Workshops: dates, locations and number of participants. ... 47 Table 3: Northern European informants: Experience with working with Asian colleagues (number of

years). ... 48 Table 4: Northern European informants: Age range. ... 48 Table 5: Asian informants: Experience with working with European colleagues (number of years). . 49 Table 6: Asian informants: Age range. ... 49 Table 7: Northern Europe: Number of workshop participants, email sets collected, and response

rate. ... 53 Table 8 : Asia: Number of workshop participants, questionnaires collected, and response rate. 54

(5)

5

Scientific environment

This doctoral thesis has been produced at the Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), in Bergen, Norway. The thesis has been supervised by Professor Sunniva Whittaker (main supervisor) from the Norwegian School of Economics, Associate Professor Anne Kari Bjørge (co-supervisor), from the Norwegian School of Economics and Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey (external supervisor), from the University of Warwick.

The author has been a member of the Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions (FOCUS) research group at the Norwegian School of Economics, and has been affiliated to the Norwegian Graduate Researcher School in Linguistics and Philology (LINGPHIL).

This doctoral education was financed by the Norwegian School of Economics. The PhD position had a duration of four years, starting in August 2011 and included one year of teaching and administrative duties. As part of this, the author has had the responsibility to initiate and teach the course FSK10 (formerly VOA045) entitled “East Asian Culture and Communication”, together with Associate Professor Kristin Rygg. This course was first offered in 2012 and has been taught every year since its creation. The author has also given lectures in the course INB425 “Chinese Challenges”, also since 2012, and has given several lectures in other courses.

The PhD position was reduced due to a part-time position the author had in the investigated company between July 2012 and June 2014 and put on hold between September 2014 and May 2015, due to a maternity leave. The position was then resumed and extended accordingly.

(6)

6

Acknowledgements

This doctoral journey would not have been possible without the help, the encouragements and the support of a great number of people and institutions and I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude.

First of all, I would like to thank the Norwegian School of Economics for giving me a four- year PhD position and providing me with excellent facilities and generous financial support for my research.

My deepest gratitude goes to my internal supervisors, Sunniva Whittaker and Anne Kari Bjørge, for their excellent guidance all along the way, broad knowledge, continuous support and availability at all times, especially when I needed it the most. Sunniva, you have encouraged me and helped me to embark on this journey at NHH. Thank you for believing in me from the very start. Your ability to understand me, to urge me to do better, to always keep in mind the bigger picture and to help me think outside the box of academic disciplines and research methods has been a tremendous help in this doctoral journey. Anne Kari, thank you for being so caring and understanding; for checking up on me when things were not that well, for the encouraging talks, for your open-door policy and for being always in the front row when I had stressful presentations. Further, your meticulousness and precision have been highly appreciated, especially in the last steps of this doctoral journey. I would also like to thank Helen-Spencer-Oatey, my external supervisor, for her constructive comments on my work. Your expertise in the field of intercultural communication has helped me a lot.

I am thankful to the company that has offered me an interesting and instructive position and allowed to me collect data. Ivar Hanson and Nina Seter, thank you for respecting my independance and my work. I am grateful to the informants and other employees whose names cannot be listed here due to anonymity. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, experiences on communication and cultural differences in the workplace.

I would like to thank the Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions (FOCUS) research group at NHH that has welcomed me warmly, and its members for their insightful comments on my different papers. Likewise, I am grateful to the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) for financing a two-weeks research stay in Copenhagen in June 2012 and for letting me

(7)

7 participate in PhD workshops in 2011 and 2012 where I received many interesting comments from PhD fellows as well as seniors researchers.

I would also like to thank the colleagues at the department of Professional and Intercultural Communication at NHH for creating a nice and inclusive working atmosphere. Thank you to Maja, Sally and Tove who have been so friendly and helpful. Thank you Vivienne Knowles for proofreading my papers. Remaining mistakes are, of course, all mine. I am particularly grateful to Renée Klepsland for her unconditional support, her encouragements and her nice words. She has been of great advice and help, ever since I moved to Norway. Un grand merci Renée!

My work has benefitted immensely from discussing with many scholars who have provided me with useful inspiration, motivation and feedback during the process. I am indebted to Kjersti Fløttum who has encouraged me, guided me and introduced me to the world of research. I have learned so much with you and from you: thank you! It has been a pleasure and a great experience to work with Kristin Rygg. It has been very nice sharing thoughts on intercultural communication and East Asia, implementing a course and later on writing an article with you. You have always welcomed my ideas cheerfully; thank you for that. It has been very inspiring to discuss with Ron Fischer. You make me question my assumptions and bring refreshing and challenging insights. Thank you for that, as well as for reading and commenting on parts of my work and providing me with constructive feedback. I am so grateful to have met Therese Sverdrup. You are so generous, open and radiate positive energy. Thank you for your support and encouragements, for the rides to the office, the talks and for commenting on my cover paper. Your insights are highly valued and I am looking forward to working further with you!

I had the opportunity to participate in Forsker Grand Prix in 2015. I have learned so much about communicating my research to the outside world, getting out of my comfort zone and I am thankful for that experience and for the great people I´ve met there. Thank you also Øyvind Torvund for your highly needed help in writing and communicating my research to a wider audience.

I would also like to thank the fellow PhD scholars at the Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication, Marte Fjørtoft, Claudia Hegrenæs and Pedro Patino, for the stimulating discussions, the mutual support and the friendship. Marte, thank you for the talks we´ve had together. It was nice and relieving to share the frustration, the new experiences, the

(8)

8 fears, and the dreams with you. Claudia, you are in turns the caring friend, the meticulous reviewer, the confidante, the colleague I work so well with. Thank you for the breakfasts, our daily breaks and, above all, your infallible support.

My friends have also played an essential role in helping to me to keep my chin up all along the way. Thank you for providing me with the highly needed breaks, the splashes of sunshine, of energy and laughter as well as for your understanding when I needed to lock myself in my research bubble. My warm thoughts go particularly to Caroline, Jean-Maurice, Julie, Francois, Intissar, Goulwen, Julia and Steffie. I am so grateful to have you in my life.

To my parents, sister and brother: in spite of the geographical distance, you are always in my thoughts. You have taught me the values of hard work, tenacity, resilience and the ability to always see the positive side of things. You have also given me the tools to build and follow my own path but I know that you are never too far if I fall down. I am indebted to you and I hope that you are proud of your daughter and little sister. (特别感谢我的爸爸妈妈，哥哥姐姐，虽然你们身在远方，我却一直挂念着你们。你们教会了我勤奋，坚韧和乐观的精神。你们鼓励我去追求自己的梦想，但是我知，成功与否，你们永远是我最坚实的后盾。感激你们对我的付出，希望你们为有我这个女儿和妹妹而自豪。)

Last but not least, this journey wouldn´t have been possible without you, Trond. You have been and are the rock I can lean against, the attentive ear I can always talk to. In addition to the emotional support and the unwavering faith in me that you have provided during this doctoral detour, you are the caring, respectful and loving companion with whom I have the privilege to share my life. Thank you for all that. Finally, Sofia, thank you for bringing even more happiness and laughs into our lives.

Annelise Ly Bergen, May 2016

(9)

9

Abstract

The globalisation of business has created new corporate structures where employees from different national backgrounds and mother tongues may become colleagues and need to communicate effectively in the same company. Successful communication among colleagues is essential but challenging. It can be even more challenging in this context where these employees are required to interact in English, used as a lingua franca, in which they may be less competent than in their mother tongues. Therefore, international internal communication, understood as the communication that takes place in the same company but involving employees from different national backgrounds, is an important phenomenon to study. The present doctoral thesis aims to investigate how international internal communication between Northern European (in this context: Norwegian, Swedish and German) and Asian (in this context: Chinese and Korean) employees unfolds in the workplace.

The research questions can be expressed as follows:

Q1: What are the key challenges facing employees when they communicate with their international colleagues and what methodological approach can be used to investigate these issues?

‐ Q2: How do employees belonging to the same community of practice and working at the same level of hierarchy make sense of culture differences and communication practices in the workplace?

‐ Q3: How do Northern European employees write internal emails in English to express request, criticism and disagreement to their Asian colleagues?

‐ Q4: How are these emails perceived by their Asian colleagues?

‐ Q5: What research methods can be used to investigate language in the workplace?

This thesis is based on data collected in a Norwegian company that works internationally. It is composed of three papers (two empirical studies and one methodological paper) that interact and complete each other, in the sense that taken together, they offer a methodological triangulation and a transdisciplinary attempt to answer the complex and multifaceted overarching research question Q1. The first paper, entitled “Making sense of communication

(10)

10 and cultural differences in the workplace: the case of Sino-Scandinavian collaboration” aims to answer Q2. The paper explores the way Chinese and Scandinavian (Norwegian and Swedish) engineers working together on transnational projects perceive and make sense (Vaara 2000; Weick 1995) of their work collaboration with regards to cultural differences and communication practices. Based on 14 interviews, the study, of an exploratory nature, shows that national cultural differences did not particularly hinder work collaboration. However, the lack of internal procedures, as well as the BELF competence of the employees made it challenging to communicate difficult messages, particularly when writing face-threatening emails in English.

The findings of this study lead to the second paper, entitled “Internal email communication in the workplace: is there an “East-West divide?” The study aims to analyse the way Northern European employees (Norwegians, Swedes and Germans) formulate three different speech acts (request, criticism and disagreement) when writing internal work emails to their Asian colleagues (Chinese and Korean) (Q3) and second, to examine the way these emails are perceived by the Asian employees, in terms of politeness, friendliness and clarity (Q4). The data consists of 182 elicited emails produced by Northern European employees using role enactment and 33 perception questionnaires collected in different Asian business units of an international company. The analytical procedure to analyse the elicited emails is inspired by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka, House, &

Kasper, 1989) while the questionnaires are analysed following sociolinguistics studies.

Last, the final paper, “Getting access to language data in the workplace: role enactment as a data-generation method” examines methods used to collect data in the workplace context (Q5). It first discusses naturally occurring data and interviews and argues in favour of the use of role enactment as a method to generate reliable and representative language data in the workplace. The use of role enactment is also discussed, with regards to the type of insights it may yield either used alone or in combination with other methods (methodological triangulation).

The thesis contributes to existing knowledge, from theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives. By refining the analysis at the level of a community of practice (engineers), the two empirical studies nuance existing theories that have emphasised the importance of national cultural differences and communication styles in the workplace. They also problematise the concept of culture, illustrate the challenges related to BELF and participate

(11)

11 in theoretical discussions on the “East-West divide” in norms of linguistic politeness.

Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, the thesis develops an analytical framework to look at the level of directness of three different speech acts and implement role enactment.

As a whole, the thesis exemplifies how methodological triangulation can be carried out. Last but not least, practical contributions include a discussion on how communication in the workplace can be improved and suggestions for the workplace are made.

(12)

12

1. Introduction

1.1. Topic and rationale

The present doctoral thesis aims to investigate how intercultural interactions between Northern European (in this context: Norwegian, Swedish and German) and Asian (in this context: Chinese and Korean) employees unfold in the workplace. The globalisation of business has created new corporate structures where employees from different national backgrounds and mother tongues may become colleagues overnight and need to communicate effectively in the same company.

Existing theories that look at intercultural interactions and that are relevant for the workplace (Hall, 1976; Hofstede, 1980, 2001; House et al. 2004) mainly frame these interactions in terms of national cultural differences. Based on these theories, Northern Europeans and Asians are usually described with diametrically opposed cultures and communication styles.

In the GLOBE study (House et al. 2004) for instance, the investigated countries are placed in a circle divided into cultural clusters. While the Nordic and the Germanic Europe clusters are close to each other, reflecting a proximity in their cultures, the Confucian Asia cluster (that includes Kina and Korea) is placed at the opposite side of the circle. Likewise, in terms of communication style (Hall, 1976), Germans and Scandinavians are described as low-context communicators while Chinese are the opposite, i.e. high-context communicators. Thus, when people from these cultures meet, misunderstandings, difficulties and cultural shocks are expected to arise. If the national cultures and communication styles are so different, however, how can Northern European and Asian employees understand each other and collaborate effectively in the workplace?

Successful communication among employees working in the same company is essential but challenging in any circumstances. Additional issue arises when the employees are from different national and linguistic backgrounds and are required to interact in English, used as a lingua franca for business purposes, hereafter named BELF (Louhiala-Salminen, Charles, &

Kankaanranta, 2005), in which they may be less competent than in their mother tongues.

Therefore, international internal communication, understood as the communication that takes place in the same company but involving employees from different national backgrounds, is

(13)

13 an important phenomenon to study. This is because it is the key to effective collaboration in the workplace; because it is a relevant issue that concerns more and more companies due to the globalisation of business; and because it is a complex phenomenon that encompasses relatively new forms of communication, such as emails. Except for a few studies (Kankaanranta, 2005; Louhiala-Salminen & Kankaanranta, 2012) however, little has been done to identify, document and conceptualise international internal communication as a problematic and relevant phenomenon.

This thesis addresses this phenomenon based on data collected in a Norwegian company that operates internationally. Over the years, misunderstandings and tensions had arisen among employees from Northern Europe and Asia and created challenges in the work collaboration among these colleagues (mainly working as engineers). The company took measures to address these issues (see 4.3.1.), and between 2012 and 2014, I worked as a cross-cultural manager in the company (see 4.3.1.). To have a better understanding of the situation, I carried out a pilot study (see 4.2.4.). The first analyses revealed two paradoxes. First, while the management thought that the challenges were caused by cultural differences across nations, the employees that I talked with (mainly engineers) felt that communication (that takes place in English while the informants are non-native speakers of the language) was actually more problematic than national cultural differences. This could be explained by the fact that most of the informants belong to the same community of practice (Wenger, 1998) (see 3.4.).

Second, while the company provided employees with courses to deal with national cultural differences led by a freelance “interculturalist” (Dahlén, 1997) (see 3.2.), little was said on communication and particularly international internal communication.

I, therefore, decided to examine international internal communication in this company. Most of the employees in the company work in transnational group projects, defined as “temporary structures designed to achieve one goal and which result from the search of horizontal collaboration in organisations” (Chevrier, 2003: 141). Thus, I have chosen to focus on transnational communication among employees working at the same level of hierarchy. In other words, I have limited the present study to interactions among employees from the same community of practice (engineers) and with the same hierarchical status (I do not examine interactions among managers and subordinates for instance). Further, my findings indicated that internal email communication was perceived as challenging, especially when “difficult”

messages, or face-threatening speech acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987) (see 3.6.) such as criticism and disagreement had to be expressed in English. On this background, it seems clear

(14)

14 that an analysis of the way these speech acts were expressed and perceived in internal email communication was needed. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, the investigation could not be tackled using solely theories on cultural differences across nations.

1.2. Research propositions and questions

Given the existing theories on national cultural differences, the tensions in the company and the management’s interpretation of the events, I expected to hear accounts of events or situations that could be explained by these national cultural differences. When I started my pilot study (see 4.2.4.), I expected the following propositions to be confirmed:

- Based on Hofstede (2001) and the GLOBE project (House et al., 2004), interpersonal conflicts based on national cultural differences are likely to affect work interactions between Northern European and Asian colleagues.

- Based on Hall’s (1976) communication framework, Northern Europeans are low- context and Asians are high-context communicators. Thus, one may expect challenges and misunderstandings in the way they communicate with each other.

The findings from the pilot study, however, indicated that national cultural differences were not perceived as a major hindrance in work collaboration among engineers across cultures.

Rather, international internal communication was a relevant phenomenon to be addressed and examined. Thus, in this doctoral thesis, I specifically investigate the present overarching question:

Q1: What are the key challenges facing employees when they communicate with their international colleagues and what methodological approach can be used to investigate these issues?

More specifically, I will try to answer the following questions:

‐ Q2: How do employees belonging to the same community of practice and working at the same level of hierarchy make sense of culture differences and communication practices in the workplace?

(15)

15

‐ Q3: How do Northern European employees write internal emails in English to express request, criticism and disagreement to their Asian colleagues?

‐ Q4: How are these emails perceived by their Asian colleagues?

‐ Q5: What research methods can be used to investigate language in the workplace?

1.3. The structure of the thesis

This doctoral thesis is based on three papers, preceded by the present cover article that provides the reader with an overview of the topic, research frameworks and methods. The papers are independent but they interact and complete each other, in the sense that taken together, they offer a methodological triangulation and a transdisciplinary attempt to answer the complex and multifaceted overarching research question Q1. I also define and problematise the concept of national culture (see 3.2.), which is a central concept in the present doctoral thesis. I answer Q2 in paper 1 where I examine the way the employees of the company perceive and make sense of communication and cultural differences. In order to do so, I resort to the concepts of sensemaking and community of practice, which I define and discuss in 3.3. and 3.4. respectively. I tackle Q3 and Q4 mainly in paper 2, where I investigate email communication in the workplace, looking at the production and the perception of these three speech acts. I draw on politeness theory (see 3.5), analyse speech acts (see 3.6.) and frame the discussion in BELF competence (see 3.7). Last, I address Q5 mainly in paper 3 and in the present cover article where I illustrate how methodological triangulation can be carried out (see 4.4.).

In this section (1), I have described the topic and presented the research questions. I will now position my work as phenomonon-driven (1.4.1) and transdisciplinary (1.4.2.). In the following section (2), I give an outline of the articles that compose this thesis. Then, in section 3, I problematise the theoretical foundations and the key concepts used in this thesis.

The research methods and data are described in section 4. I discuss the findings, present some limitations and suggest further research directions in section 5. After a list of references (6), the three articles are presented in section 7. A list of appendix (8) closes this thesis.

(16)

16

1.4. Positioning in a discipline?

1.4.1. A phenomenon‐driven research project

For many researchers, it is relatively straighforward to position their work within a specific, clearly delineated theoretical framework, thus enabling them to address a research gap that has been previously identified and spelled out. In the present doctoral thesis however, existing theories could not adequately explain the phenomenon of international internal communication. This is mainly due to three reasons.

First, the findings from the pilot study (observation and interviews), as detailed in 4.2.4.

showed that the employees perceived and decribed the intercultural encounters in a different way than what we would expect from theories in cross-cultural management (mainly Hofstede (2001) and the GLOBE project (House et al. 2004), as explained in the overviews by Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson (2006) and Portugal Ferreira, Li, Rosa Reis, & Ribeiro Serra (2014)). That is, the employees were aware of the national cultural differences between Northern Europe and Asia but they did not perceive them as a hindrance to collaboration in the workplace. Similarly, in terms of communication style, the engineers felt that communication across business units was direct, contrary to Hall´s (1976) national categorisation of communication styles. Second, the use of computer-mediated communication (e.g. through emails for example) is a relatively novel organisational occurrence that has changed the way employees across borders communicate. Third, the globalised corporate structures and the new ways of communicating in the workplace have created a complex environment that the existing theories could not encompass. It is this complexity, partly caused by the new modes of communication, which could be perceived as challenging by the employees of the company. Therefore, I decided to focus on and investigate this organisational issue, and adopted a phenomenon-driven approach.

The concept “phenomenon-driven research” originally comes from the field of organisational change (Schwarz & Stensaker, 2014). It promotes research that takes a phenomenon as the starting point: “rather than constructing gaps in existing theories, such research is inductively framed with a goal to understand the phenomenon that the researchers had either observed in organizations or which bugged them enough to undertake research and which could not be explained through existing theory” (Schwarz & Stensaker, 2014:10). Theories, however, are

(17)

17 not set aside or neglected; empirical data are used as the starting point and several theories are drawn on eclectically and integrated to describe and explain the phenomenon.

In the present thesis, I have investigated the phenomenon of international internal communication, taking the observation of the phenomenon as a point of departure and drawing on an eclectic set of theories, such as sensemaking (Vaara, 2000; Weick, 1995), politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and BELF (Louhiala-Salminen et al., 2005) to identify, capture, document and conceptualise its key issues. The theories I have drawn on, however, belong to different disciplines, which is a topic that I address in the next part.

1.4.2. Positioning in a discipline: a difficult endeavour

I have found it challenging to position the present doctoral thesis in a clearly demarcated discipline. There are three reasons that I detail below: the complexity of the investigated phenomenon, the nature of the disciplines I draw on and the approach that I adopt.

First, the investigated problem is complex by nature as it covers different aspects that include, among other things: the collaboration imperative in the workplace context (Q1); the employees’ own perceptions of the problems (Q2); the management’s interpretation of the events and action implemented (Q2); the actual way these employees communicate (Q3); the perception of the communicative event by the receivers (Q4); the use of emails (Q3 and Q4) and the use of English as a lingua franca by non-native speakers of English (Q2, Q3 and Q4).

To tackle these research questions, I have drawn on concepts and theories that originally come from different disciplines, but that I have applied to the international workplace context, while these concepts and theories originally investigate monocultural environments (see figure 1 for an overview). For instance, in order to examine the perceptions of the employees, I have used sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995) that initially derives from organisational theory and that has later been applied to cultural differences in mergers and acquisitions (Vaara, Risberg, Søderberg, & Tienari, 2003; Vaara, 2000). In addition, to look at the realisation of the language in the internal emails, I have drawn on pragmatics, examining speech acts applied in an intercultural setting (intercultural pragmatics). Further, to discuss the findings of this study, I have also framed the discussion of one of my papers in politeness theory that derives from pragmatics and that initially describes politeness norms in a monocultural setting. I have borrowed the theory and applied it to an intercultural context,

(18)

18 discussing how different national norms of politeness may or may not collide in the workplace setting. To account for the fact that the informants are communicating in a language that is not their mother tongues, I have drawn on ELF, originally derived from sociolinguistics, but that is now set in a new context, the business setting, becoming a BELF (Louhiala-Salminen et al., 2005) issue.

Second, the phenomenon that I wish to investigate is initially situated at the crossroads of intercultural communication (IC), intercultural business communication (IBC) and cross- cultural management (CCM). These are, in turn, informed by several disciplines (for a discussion on the multidisciplinary nature of these disciplines, see Spencer-Oatey & Franklin (2009) for IC, Bargiela-Chiappini & Nickerson (2003) for IBC and Primecz, Romani, &

Sackmann (2009) for CCM). All three disciplines look at interactions among people from different cultures, usually understood as national cultures (see 3.2). IBC is directly informed by IC but examines interactions in the work context. Since the object of my thesis is limited to interactions in the workplace setting, it would be rather positioned in IBC than in IC (that is grounded in a body of theory but has little application to business culture according to Beamer & Varner (2001)) and in CCM, even though I also draw on researchers working with IC. On the other hand, IBC and CCM are closely related and one can therefore wonder what differenciates these two disciplines. Kristiansen (2004) offers a “checklist” that can be used to investigate the autonomy status of a discipline, looking at the sociological and epistemological characteristics of the disciplines. A survey of the epistemological characteristics of IBC and CCM demonstrate that the disciplines are relatively similar: they share the same research object, i.e. cultures in organisations/workplace settings, they use a common terminology, and the methods of empirical investigations can also be similar (observation, interviews). One could imagine that the research interests of IBC and CCM are different. Given their prefixes, one may expect that IBC investigates cultural behaviours and values in interaction (inter-), while CCM examines them comparatively (cross-). In reality, one finds comparative studies in IBC and studies of interactions in CCM (see definition below). They also traditionally resort to the same positivist paradigm, starting from the assumption of distinct cultural groups and that members of these groups “have a culture”

(Piller, 2007, 2011), often understood as national culture. Looking at sociological criteria, we can notice that many associations and conferences in IBC and CCM at the international level have overlapping interests and topics. Cases in point are GEML (Groupe d’Étude Management et Langage, a French research group on management and language); the

(19)

19 Association for Business Communication (ABC); and IALIC (International Association for Language and Intercultural Communication), which organised a conference on language and intercultural communication in the workplace in 2012. To my understanding, what distinguishes IBC and CCM is the approach adopted to study culture in a workplace setting:

while IBC scholars look at language and communication, CCM researchers take a business and management approach. IBC may be described as a relatively emergent discipline (Bargiela-Chiappini & Nickerson, 2003) which focuses on the work context and studies discourses produced in business settings, or “business discourses” (Bargiela-Chiappini &

Nickerson, 2007). IBC did not include linguistic studies until the work of Ehlich & Wagner (1995), but since then, numerous studies looking at language in business settings and using naturally occurring data have been published (for an overview, see Spencer-Oatey, 2010).

CCM, on the other hand, is defined as “the compilation of research and practice of cross- national comparisons, intercultural interaction and multiple culture studies, including research that focuses on culture at the national, organisational and sub-organisational levels” (Primecz et al., 2009). This difference of focus, language versus management, may be explained by the fact that the core group of researchers in IBC are mainly trained as linguists, while CCM researchers usually have a business background and/or work in business schools.

Third, the term “discipline” originates from the Latin words “discipulus”, which means pupil, and “disciplina”, which means teaching. A common understanding of discipline, then, is that of a subject of study in a college or university. I am formally trained in organisational sciences and in linguistics¹, so I am influenced by these two disciplines, seen as the parent disciplines (see figure 1). In this perspective, there is no denying that I perceive and investigate the phenomenon of international internal communication through my disciplinary lenses. Therefore, I draw on linguistics and more specifically on pragmatics and on organisational behaviour. I refer to the figure 1 below for an illustration of how the disciplines and theories interact with each other.

1I have a master´s degree in international management (SKEMA Business School, France) and a master´s degree in French language and linguistics (University of Bergen, Norway)

(20)

20 Figure 1: Disciplines and theories used in this thesis

(21)

21 As I have shown in this part, my thesis is motivated by the analysis of a phenomenon, international internal communication. To do so, I draw on theories that originally come from different disciplines. In doing so, I have adopted a transdiciplinary approach and framed my work in a new form of knowledge production (Mode 2) that I describe below.

1.5. Mode 2 production of knowledge and the transdisciplinary nature of my work

As stated in the previous part, research contributions have traditionally become academic knowledge through a clearly demarcated theoretical framework and discipline. More recently however, a new form of knowledge has emerged alongside the traditional one, that Gibbons et al. (1994) have named Mode 2. In their book, The New Production of knowledge (1994), the authors reflect on and discuss the existing mode of knowledge production (Mode 1) and identify the features of the new mode of knowledge production (Mode 2). The attributes of Mode 1 and Mode 2 are summed up in the table below:

Mode 1 Mode 2

Academic context Context of application

Disciplinary Transdisciplinary

Homogeneity Heterogeneity

Autonomy Reflexivity/social accountability

Traditional quality control (peer review) Novel quality control Table 1: Attributes of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production

To shed light on the different aspects of this complex phenomenon, I have therefore adopted a transdisciplinary approach and framed my thesis in Mode 2 (Gibbons et al., 1994). The notion of Mode 2 has received enormous visibility: it has been referred to in over 1000 scientific articles and the number of references per year has been and still is increasing (Hessels & van Lente, 2008). Some of the initial attributes exposed in 1994 have furthermore been refined in 2003 (Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2003).The details of the reception of the notion, as well as its criticisms go beyond the scope of this part and will therefore not be described further.

Mode 2 is particularly relevant for the present thesis, especially for three of its main attributes: context of application, transdisciplinarity and reflexivity. First, knowledge is

(22)

22 produced in a context of application, and is “intended to be useful to someone whether in industry or government, or society more generally and this imperative is present from the beginning. Knowledge is always produced under an aspect of continuous negotiation and it will not be produced unless and until the interests of the various actors are included”

(Gibbons et al., 1994: 4). This is the case here, as the starting point is a need stemming from a company (see 1.1). Furthermore, the present thesis is phenomenon-driven (see 1.4.1.), and the topic of international internal communication, (which was perceived as challenging by the employees of the company), is the starting point of the investigation.

Second, the attribute of transdisciplinarity² is relevant for my thesis. Coined by Piaget in the early 1970s (Balsiger, 2004; Klein, 2004; Ramadier, 2004), the concept of transdisciplinarity is rather new and represents a new development in disciplinary thinking. Balsiger defines the concept as follows:

A scientific problem transgressing the boundaries of scientific disciplines arises when: (a) the problem is generated in an extra scientific field (economics, politics, the living world); (b) a solution to the problem is urgently required in this field; (c) public opinion considers these fields relevant; and (d) when it is brought to science in an institutional way (research tasks, financing of project).

Balsiger 2004: 412-413

It should be noted that numerous definitions coexist (Lawrence & Després, 2004; Ramadier, 2004). Most of the definitions, however, have several shared aims and I detail some of them below. First, transdisciplinarity is a problem-oriented approach (Balsiger, 2004; Gibbons et al., 1994). These problems are complex, heterogeneous, and are partly due to economic and technical globalisation. As Bill and Klein (2001) point out, “because they are complex, the

2 I make a distinction between three related concepts: multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary. Following the work of Balsiger (2004), I briefly define the three concepts as follows.

In multidisciplinary projects, contributors from several disciplines work on a given theme (for instance, a sociologist, an economist and a psychologist examining the theme of unemployment) but collaboration among the participants and the disciplines is not necessary and no problem resolution is required. If a solution is intended however, then collaboration among scientists is needed. If the solution aims to be a purely scientific one, then it is an interdisciplinary form of collaboration. On the other hand, “if the striven solution is explicitly meant to consider experiences from affected persons (…) collaboration is requested not only among disciplinary scientific programs but also among scientists and individuals who represent the group of affected persons” (Balsiger 2004; 412), then, we deal with transdisciplinarity.I do not further discuss the distinction between these three concepts but refer to the work of Klein (1990, 2000, 2004), Balsiger (2004) and Våge (2011) for a more comprehensive definition of the three concepts.

(23)

23 problems can only be solved through the cooperation of many sectors of society and, in today’s globalized world, with an intercultural attitude” (Bill & Klein, 2001: 25). Second, transdisciplinarity is necessarily based on disciplinary practices. It is, however, based on the assumption that these practices must evolve to match the complexity of the issues facing today´s scientific community (Balsiger, 2004; Ramadier, 2004). Third, in doing so, transdisciplinarity knowledge develops its own theoretical structures, research methods and mode of practice (Balsiger, 2004; Gibbons et al., 1994; Klein, 2004).

Last, the attribute of reflexivity relates to the researcher becoming more aware of the societal consequences of his/her work and to the dissemination of the results: “In Mode 2 sensitivity to the impact of the research is built in from the start. It forms part of the context of application” (Gibbons et al., 1994: 7). As a phenomenon-driven research project, the primary target audience are both academics and practitioners, “by generating insights about problems that are sourced by or relevant to managers” (Schwarz & Stensaker, 2014:13). Such an approach, by contributing to increasing knowledge within a field rather than to a particular theory may produce research that has immediate implications for practice (see 5.4.). In the present thesis, the communication of the results was an integrated part of the culture project in the company and one of my main tasks was to communicate the results in seminars that I was organising. The results were presented in simple, non-academic language, formulated as a practical guide to help employees communicate better in the company. In addition, I have also presented the findings of my study in my academic work, through presentations in international conferences, publication of research articles in peer-reviewed journals and of a doctoral thesis. The applied nature of my study (context of application) and the growing awareness of and interest in communication issues in international companies have also played an important role in increasing its visibility and the interest of a non-academic audience for my work. In this perspective, I have had the chance to present my research results in different arenas and to different audiences.³

In the present thesis, the problem originates from the need of a company and the knowledge produced is bounded to a specific context of application. Furthermore, this problem is

3 I have for instance been interviewed on the radio, have written a column in a national business newspaper; have had various consulting missions, and have been invited to give talks addressed to various audiences. I have also participated in a PhD national communication competition (Forsker Grand Prix) in 2015.

(24)

24 complex by nature as it covers different layers and includes several actors. I argue that it should be investigated using different research methods and using theories and frameworks coming from different disciplines (see section 1.4.2.). In line with existing projects that involve researchers from the humanities, the social sciences and actors outside the academic sphere,⁴ I have therefore adopted a transdisciplinary approach.

In this section, I have presented the topic, the research questions and the phenomenon-driven approach. By doing so, I have framed my thesis in Mode 2 production of knowledge. In the next section, I offer an outline of the three articles that compose this dissertation.

4 See for instance the LINGCLIM Project, (http://www.uib.no/en/project/lingclim) based at the University of Bergen that looks at the linguistic representations of climate change discourse and their interpretations, and at the Health, Media and Society Project (http://www.healthmediasociety.net/) based at the University of Ghent that examines how news media construct health issues.

(25)

25

2. Outline of the articles

2.1. Article 1: Making sense of communication and cultural differences in the workplace: the case of Sino‐Scandinavian collaboration⁵

The first paper explores the way Chinese and Scandinavian⁶ (Norwegian and Swedish) engineers working together on transnational projects in an international company perceive and make sense (Vaara 2000; Weick 1995) of their work collaboration with regards to cultural differences and communication practices. The research questions are threefold and expressed as follows: 1) Do national cultural differences affect and hinder work collaboration among Chinese and Scandinavian colleagues working on transnational projects? 2) What other factors may affect effective collaboration in the workplace? And 3) How do the actors’of transnational project groups make sense of cultural differences?

The classic view of culture often sees cultural differences across nations as a source of conflicts and misunderstandings. This paper however, is informed by a socio-constructivist tradition and looks at the way the actors of the interactions actually perceive and understand these differences. Based on 14 interviews of Norwegian, Swedish and Chinese engineers working in the same company, the present paper, of an exploratory nature, shows that national cultural differences did not particularly hinder work collaboration. This is explained by the fact that the informants (all engineers) belong to the same community of practice: they have a common technical background, use the same technical terminology and resort to international drawings. Their communication style is also described as direct. The study also shows that factors that could actually hinder work communication include the lack of internal procedures, as well as the BELF competence of the employees, which made it challenging to communicate difficult messages, particularly when writing face-threatening emails in English.

The paper also discusses how the term “cultural differences”, used by the informants, is vague

5I am the sole author of this article. It is forthcoming in a special issue of the Chinese Journal of Communication, edited by Fred Dervin and Regis Machart.

6A clarification about the empirical data: The starting point of the study and of my mission in the company was to look at intercultural problems between Chinese and Scandinavian employees. Later on however, I was asked to extend the workshops to Germany and Korea. This allowed me to collect more empirical data. I address this issue when I present the informants in 4.3.2.

(26)

26 and encompasses lack of internal procedures, poor English proficiency and how it is actually used as an excuse not to get things done.

The findings of this study lead to the second paper that looks at the production and the perceptions of three speech acts in internal email work communication.

2.2. Article 2: Internal email communication in the workplace: is there an “East‐

West divide”?⁷

The aim of this second article is twofold: first to analyse the way Northern European employees (Norwegians, Swedes and Germans) formulate three different speech acts (request, criticism and disagreement) when writing internal work emails to their Asian colleagues (Chinese and Korean) and second, to examine the way these emails are perceived by the Asian employees, in terms of politeness, friendliness and clarity. The data consists of 182 elicited emails produced by Northern European employees using role enactment and 33 perception questionnaires collected in different Asian business units of an international company. The analytical procedure to analyse the elicited emails is inspired by the Cross- Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) while the questionnaires are analysed following sociolinguistics studies. Last, the discussion of the results is partly anchored in the ongoing debate on the East-West politeness debate (Leech, 2005).

7 This paper was published in March 2016: Ly, A. (2016): Internal e-mail communication in the workplace: Is there an “East-West divide”? Intercultural Pragmatics. Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages 37–

70. I have been granted permission to use the article for my thesis by the publisher, Mouton de Gruyter, in an email dated 26.04.2016.

(27)

27

2.3. Article 3: Getting access to language data in the workplace: role enactment as a data‐generation method⁸

The final paper examines methods used to collect data in the workplace context. It first discusses naturally occurring data and interviews (that have been used for the first paper).

These methods, however, present limitations that are described here, particularly with regards to access, time and control of variables. This paper argues in favour of the use of role enactment (that has been used to collect the data for the second paper) as a method to generate reliable and representative language data in the workplace. Role enactment is then defined and argued for, as the method allows high control of contextual variables and comparability across cultures. Last, the use of role enactment is discussed, with regards to the type of insights it may yield either used alone or in combination with other methods (methodological triangulation).

8 This paper was published as a book chapter in October 2015: Ly, A. (2015): Getting access to language data in the workplace: role enactment as a data-generation method In G. Alessi & G. Jacobs (Eds.), The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research Reflections on Interacting with the Workplace (pp. 63-80). Palgrave Macmillan. I have been granted permission to use the article for my thesis by the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, in an email dated 27.01.2016.

(28)

28

3. Theoretical foundations and key concepts

3.1. Section outline

In this section, I present the theoretical foundations and key concepts that I use in my thesis. I define and problematise the concept of national culture (3.2.), which is a central concept in the present doctoral thesis. Then, I discuss the theory of sensemaking⁹ (3.3.) and the concept of community of practice (3.4.) that are used to answer research question Q2 (How do employees belonging to the same community of practice and working at the same level of hierarchy make sense of culture differences and communication practices in the workplace?).

To investigate Q3 (How do Northern European employees write internal emails in English to express request, criticism and disagreement to their Asian colleagues?) and Q4 (How are these emails perceived by their Asian colleagues?), I draw on politeness theory (3.5), speech act theory (3.6.) and frame the discussion in the concept of BELF competence (3.7).

3.2. The concept of national culture in CCM

The term of national culture is central to the study of intercultural interactions and yet, there is a lack of consensus in CCM on how it should be conceptualised. Different actors, with different agendas, contribute to this complexity: on the one hand, intercultural trainers, or

“interculturalists” (Dahlén, 1997) and on the other hand, researchers with divergent views on culture.

Interculturalists¹⁰ are consultants who deal with intercultural training sessions geared towards company employees. As explained by Mahadevan & Mayer (2012), they are influenced by market pressures and need to “sell their expertise as those who enable others to overcome societal cultural differences” and by doing so, they “might need to exaggerate cultural difference in order to sell themselves as the experts who can help overcome it” (Mahadevan and Mayer, 2012:8). The more differently another culture is presented, the better the need for

9 I adopt Weick (1995) and Vaara’s (2000) spelling of sensemaking (one word).

10One may argue that it is unusual to describe the work of the “interculturalist” in a doctoral thesis, as their work is not research-based. It is important here, however, as they have an influence on the way the employees perceived cultural differences in the workplace (see research question Q2 and paper 1).

(29)

29 the interculturalist is justified and this may result in the tendency to present cultures such as China as more alien than they actually are (Dervin, 2015). In the seminars they organise and in the books and handbooks written by the interculturalists, Northern Europeans and Asians are depicted as diametrically opposed in their cultural values and communication patterns (see the example provided in the introduction of paper 1). The encounter with the distant national other is described as a shock: when cultures meet, misunderstandings, conflicts and

“collisions” (Lewis, 2006) arise. To help the participants cope with these challenges that cultural differences represent, the interculturalists offer a simplistic description of national cultures, setting aside cultural paradoxes (Osland & Bird, 2000) inherent to all cultures and provide a list of Dos and Don´ts that are easy to understand and relate to, particularly to the busy employees looking for a quick survival guide. Beamer and Varner compare these lists to a snapshot from a movie: “It is accurate, but without the context of the movie´s story line, character development, or even a specific episode, the snapshot´s significance may not be understandable” (Beamer & Varner, 2001:11). The knowledge they communicate is generally built on personal observations rather than research-based (or, if it is based on research, it is predominantly on Hofstede´s cultural framework). Most of these intercultural trainers conceptualise national culture in a simplistic and essentialist way, providing stereotyped portrayals of culture and “quick fixes” to solve cultural differences across nations. This simplistic knowledge is often the one that is communicated in company seminars, shaping employees’ understandings and perceptions of cultural differences. I come back to this point in 3.3.

On the other hand, academic researchers in CCM who investigate the effects of national culture in organisational settings have divergent conceptions of national culture, either positivist or socio-constructivist (or socio-constructionist¹¹). The definitions and an overview of these two conceptions can be found in the theoretical framework of paper 1. The positivist conception of culture, mainly represented by Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) framework still dominates in CCM studies (Kirkman et al., 2006; Kittler, Ryg, & Mackinnon, 2011; Portugal Ferreira et al., 2014). Over the last twenty years, however, an increasing number of voices have challenged the traditional view on culture and the validity of the notion of national culture (Chevrier, 2003; Fang, 2012; Primecz et al., 2009; Sackmann & Phillips, 2004;

11 The terms constructivist and constructionist have slightly different meanings (see for instance Ackermann, online). To my knowledge however, they tend to be used interchangeably.

(30)

30 Søderberg & Holden, 2002; Tung & Verbeke, 2010). These researchers claim that the concept of national culture is outdated for dealing with the cultural complexity the transnational companies are facing. Therefore, some of them advocate for a multiple culture perspective, including organisational, regional, professional (see for example Sackmann & Phillips, 2004) and political (Chevrier, 2003) cultures, while others propose looking at culture from a socio- constructivist perspective (Gertsen, Søderberg, & Torp, 1998; Kleppestø, 1998; Søderberg &

Holden, 2002).

The origins of socio-constructivism are difficult to trace (Burr, 2015) but according to Gudykunst, Lee, Nishida, & Ogawa, (2004) it was first introduced by Applegate & Sypher (1983, 1988) in IC. Given the permeable boundaries of IC, IBC and CCM as disciplines, we may infer that it has spread further. In CCM, Kleppestø’s (1998) contribution is, to my knowledge, the first to mention this approach. Socio-constructivism opposes what is referred to as positivism and argues that “the ways in which we commonly understand the world, the categories and concepts we use, are historically and culturally specific” (Burr, 2015:4).

Therefore, the main stance of socio-constructivism is that culture is not given or determined in advance but comes “into existence in relation to and in contrast with other cultural communities” (Søderberg & Holden, 2002:112). I provide an overview of the studies that have used this approach in CCM in paper 1.

These two approaches oppose each other at the ontological and epistemological levels. Little however is said on how the employees actually perceive communication and cultural differences in the workplace. As set above, some employees may have been influenced by the interculturalist discourse, which may have, in turn, changed their perceptions of the “other”

and of the interactions with the “other” (Dervin, 2012, 2013, 2015).

In order to go beyond this contradiction between positivist and socio-constructivist conceptions of culture, I raise three points. First, I argue that culture possesses a part of regularity and a part of variability and, following Spencer-Oatey (2008), I adopt the present definition of culture: a “fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour” (Spencer-Oatey 2008b:3, cited in Spencer- Oatey

& Franklin, 2009:15). Second, following Sackmann and Philipps (2004) who urge to critically

International internal communication in the workplace: a transdisciplinary approach